Cupra Born EV to bring eco-seats from the sea

The Volkswagen Group’s second Spanish offshoot Cupra is taking its sustainability push to new levels with the upcoming Cupra Born EV.

Spun off from Seat in 2018, the Barcelona-based Cupra brand – due to be launched Down Under around mid-2022 – has delved into its Mediterranean Sea culture to create the seats for its VW ID.3-based electric car, which could be available in Australia as soon as late next year.

Teaming up with the Seaqual Initiative, Cupra says the seat material for its entry-level Born comes from plastics recovered from the ocean and processed back into aramid fibres at nearby Girona, Spain.

The process began with Seaqual asking Spanish fishermen to keep on board any plastic or waste material they pulled up in their nets.

Whenever they put into port, Seaqual volunteers grabbed the waste from the fishermen and sent it to the Riberpet recycling plant in Girona.

There the waste was sorted, crushed into washed flake, formed into pellets and finally spun into the recycled polymer Seaqual Yarn fibres that are used as the facing materials on the Born’s seats in a process called upcycling.

“We have been focusing on ecological materials all around the car, and we spoke with the Seaqual Initiative very early in the Born’s development,” Cupra designer Amanda Gomez told carsales.

“We asked the fishermen to keep all the plastic they ‘catch’ and give it to us.

“We use it to create a sustainable yarn and the seat material is 86 per cent recycled plastic,” she said.

Cupra also makes the Born CO2-neutral before it reaches the hands of its European customers, right down to including the transportation of the cars from their Zwickau production plant in Germany.

The fished plastics are augmented with plastic recovered from beaches all over Spain by Seaqual volunteers.

Seaqual is, ironically, a catchall community of individuals, organisations and companies that have committed to cleaning oceans and seas and raising awareness to fight marine littering.

“The new bucket seats will be created from a recycled polymer fiber fabric, SEAQUAL YARN, Upcycled Marine Plastic retrieved from beaches, oceans, rivers and estuaries and seas,” said the Seaqual Initiative in a statement.

“This innovative material is produced thanks to the collaboration of fishermen, NGOs and local communities who collect the litter.

“The new CUPRA Born will contribute to the reduction of global CO2 emissions and the fulfillment of European objectives.

“From now on, thanks to the collaboration with Seaqual Initiative, the brand will also impulse circular economy and the care of the Mediterranean and its surroundings.”

Seaqual claims 12 million tonnes of plastic is dumped directly into the world’s seas and oceans every year.

“We know we can’t take all the plastic out of the ocean by doing this, but we are doing something,” Cupra’s Gomez said.

“We ask the fishermen in the sea, the rivers and the estuaries to collect it, because before they would just throw it back in the sea.

“It’s imperative to get it out of the sea early while it still floats and fishermen are in the right place with the right tools to do that.

“Once it sinks, we can’t reach it and it breaks down eventually and enters the foodchain, so we’re trying to get to it before that happens,” she said.

“We’d be very happy if the day came when we had to find another material for the seats because there was no more plastic in the seas and oceans, but that’s not the trendline.

“At the heart of it, we all just need to be more responsible with what single-use plastics they buy and how they get rid of them,” Gomez said.

That’s not the only recycled material in the Born, though. It also uses two colours of the Dinamica recycled microfibre for the door panels and armrests.

Both the Dinamica and Seaqual fibres can be used with heated seats as well as the Born’s massage functions.

Besides Cupra’s seats for the Born, the Seaqual Initiative’s recycled materials are used by companies around the world, from heavy industries to fashion.

It is even used by an Australian company, the family-owned Comfort Group, which makes bedding and foam products.